Constructor: Enrique Henestroza Anguiano
Relative difficulty: Medium to slightly harder than Medium (high 3s?)
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THEME: POLAR OPPOSITE (37A: One totally unlike another ... or what each answer on the edge of this puzzle has?) — pairs of edge answers are opposites in terms of meaning *and* are physically opposite one another in the grid
Theme answers:
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Conceptually interesting, in that "opposite" plays out in two ways. I do object to POLAR, in that only ABOVE and BELOW are truly polar opposites, positionally. I also don't really like the winky crossword clues on HARD and EASY. Getting in your little self-congratulatory meta-cluing isn't worth sacrificing the clue phrasing pattern you've got going on: on hours, off hours; heaven, hell; ring out, ring in; take off, land ... but then Monday, Saturday? Those aren't "opposites." Yes, Monday *NYTXW* tend to be (relatively) easy and Saturday *NYTXW* tend to be (relatively) hard, but that pair needed a better set of clues more in keeping with the others. More oppositey. The fill is iffy in places, but mainly it's just very PLAIN. A few long Downs give it a little zazz, but those highly, highly segmented areas, yikes, it's just a bunch of sequestered short stuff. The grid shape is the easily the most irritating thing about the puzzle. Having only the tiniest of passages into the corners, particularly the NW / SE, makes the puzzle lose its sense of flow; it's no fun to have to dive into a corner that is wholly cut off and where nothing more interesting than 3- and 4-letter words are happening. But everything is the way it is to accommodate a pretty elaborate theme, and I think the thematic payoff warrants the cost in dull short fill / grid segmentation.
Relative difficulty: Medium to slightly harder than Medium (high 3s?)
Theme answers:
- WORK / PLAY (1A: 9-to-5 activity / 69A: Off-hours activity)
- ABOVE / BELOW (5A: In heaven, say / 68A: In hell, say)
- HARD / EASY (10A: Like a Saturday crossword / 67A: Like a Monday crossword)
- OLD / NEW (23D: Like the year you ring out on December 31 / 43D: Like the year you ring in on January 1)
- DEPART / ARRIVE (13D: Take off, as a plane / 44D: Land, as a plane)
1: affected or caused by beer beery voices2: smelling or tasting of beerbeery tavern (merriam-webster.com)
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Having DEVIL in the grid made me want ANGEL in the grid. Also weird that DEVIL is up next to ABOVE consider ABOVE is clued as [In heaven, say] (hell, where you might expect to find the DEVIL, is down BELOW). PLAIN makes me want FANCY. MICRO, MACRO. Etc. Can of worms, this theme. Not sure why this played a little slow, but it did. Part of that was grid segmentation (really is a speed-killer for me). Part of it was theme cluing—because the clues had to follow this kind of singsongy oppositey phrasing pattern in every case, they were not always as direct or straightforward as you'd expect short answers in a puzzle to be. Then there's the clue on ITERATION, which makes no sense to me (21D: Method of successive improvement). I guess in math (?) there's some def of ITERATION that involves a sense of "improvement," but the basic def of ITERATION has zero to do with "improvement." It's just a repetition, or a (new) version or incarnation. Improvement not implied. So, yuck. Also, I had ITERATING at first, which made the SW corner icky to get into. Took me a bit to get SOTOSPEAK because I didn't have the first letters, because (again) of the grid segmentation. I could've just jumped up into the NE corner and tried to solve my way back out, but, again, I like flow. I hate just jumping into a corner where I've got nothing if I don't have to. Clue on EST was baffling to me (32A: Gare de l'___, Paris railway station). Spelled DITZY with a (correct) "Z" and not the much dumber "S" (50D: Bubbleheaded). No major trouble. A very plausible Tuesday experience overall.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]